


Correcting the Flaw

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: Fireside Tales [23]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe, GFY, Gen, Orcs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:31:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are forever hungry, the cattle, and do not even wait for true starvation to satisfy that hunger with the weak of their own kind. It's a flaw, she thinks, and does not let it come into her work on the soldiers - they will eat many things, all of them meat, but not their own kind. Perhaps the cattle, if they are pressed and there is nothing else, but never each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Correcting the Flaw

**Author's Note:**

> Cúnessa, early Third Age  
> Prompt: Hunger  
> Alternate Universe: Flame of Durin
> 
> Cúnessa is one of the primary characters in an as-yet-unposted story in _Flame of Durin_. She is also the character in [Remember](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1085680).

They are forever hungry, the cattle, and do not even wait for true starvation to satisfy that hunger with the weak of their own kind. It's a flaw, she thinks, and does not let it come into her work on the soldiers - they will eat many things, all of them meat, but not their own kind. Perhaps the cattle, if they are pressed and there is nothing else, but never each other.

The soldiers will be the perfection that Melkor had sought to create with each successive working. The soldiers, the generals that control the rabble of cattle and sentinals, to fight those who cannot be drawn from under the slavery of the other Valar. Under her command, for she will not share them with the other apprentice, no matter that Sauron is a Maia, and has more arcane power than she.

After all, he thinks the cattle as worthy soldiers, and the slaves of the Valar as enemies to be defeated, not as people to be freed of their delusions. And he fell to their might, because he thought only to use control and war - so like the Valar, and the Maia who serve them. Too, there is that he thought them worthless when they were thoughtless and unfinished.

No, she will not share. For she has a hunger too, and it cannot be served by dividing her power with a failed apprentice to Melkor, no matter how great he thinks himself. She will feed her hunger with the bleeding of the cattle they share, and the creation of soldiers, and the freeing of the slaves of the Valar. Until all of Arda is free, and her hunger slaked for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Cúnessa will never be anything other than creepy, and I doubt she will completely lose her fondness and near-worship of Melkor, but she does become something of an ally for Erebor and Mirkwood. By the time of the War of the Ring, in fact, her hatred of Sauron is as great as her hatred of the Valar, and for much the same reasons. She sees both as an enslaving force - but depite her eventual realization that Melkor wasn't terribly much different from the other Valar, she still cannot let go of her love for him. It gives me a good deal of cognative dissonance, but she seems to live with it very well.


End file.
